MedVirginia becomes first community HIE to connect with Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record

MedVirginia announced today that it has achieved another significant milestone: becoming the first community health information exchange (HIE) to connect with the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER). VLER is a collaboration between Veterans Affairs (VA), the Department of Defense (DoD), and civilian health systems to connect the health records of our nation's active duty military personnel and Veterans.

“I treat many Veterans and service members and having this capability is fantastic. With a simple query from my desktop I can easily access summary medical records that previously were challenging and time consuming to obtain.”

For this initiative, MedVirginia is leveraging its existing open-source CONNECT gateway to the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) in order to enable clinical information exchange based on the Continuity of Care Document (CCD) C32 format. MedVirginia has been in live production via the NHIN since early 2009 and the VLER accomplishment highlights the scalability of MedVirginia's platform.

MedVirginia's CEO, Michael Matthews, stated, "We are very pleased to partner with the DoD and VA for the betterment of health care for Wounded Warriors and Veterans in Hampton Roads and beyond. This is an important milestone given how often military personnel and Veterans receive some portion of their care in the private sector."

MedVirginia added connectivity to four healthcare facilities in the Hampton Roads region for VLER: Mary Immaculate Hospital, DePaul Medical Center, Maryview Medical Center, and Harbour View Health Center, all part of the Bon Secours Hampton Roads Health System. This is in addition to the connectivity being implemented by MedVirginia to Centra's three hospitals in the Lynchburg region, and the existing connectivity with two Sheltering Arms hospitals and four hospitals from the Bon Secours Richmond Health System.

In addition to allowing VA and DoD physicians to query its clinical data repository, MedVirginia has deployed a secure means for civilian physicians to query for information about their patients who are military personnel and participating Veterans. Dr. Maryam Rostami, a physician with Bon Secours' Eagle Harbor Medical Associates in Hampton Roads, was one of the first to be able to do so. Dr. Rostami stated, "I treat many Veterans and service members and having this capability is fantastic. With a simple query from my desktop I can easily access summary medical records that previously were challenging and time consuming to obtain."